The existing process employed by WDBs with respect to the above-mentioned required tasks is cumbersome, time consuming and expensive. Steps in the existing process include:                Determining the priority sectors in a region: WDBs likely use a combination of hiring consultants and subscribing to regional economic analysis software in order to study the regional economy and pinpoint sectors which appear as important to the region. No set formula is used to determine a “priority sector” and thus any number of factors may be used in its determination.        Determining the companies within the priority sectors which may be experiencing layoffs soon: In the best circumstances, WDBs use the Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) Financial Stress Score to determine which businesses to reach out to, targeting those which may just be starting to experience financial difficulties, as indicated by this score. In these cases, the D&B data are either accessed via a “raw” flat-file format or via an on-line search portal which, upon entering criteria, returns results in a list-based or spreadsheet format. Thus, while useful, the list is stand-alone, requiring import into various other software programs in order to map it, connect to contacts, be shared among a group, etc. Even with these limitations, the use of the D&B Financial Stress Score for layoff aversion is considered a best practice among WDBs nationally.        
Most of the time, however, agencies do not know which companies are in poor financial shape until a WARN notice gets issued and, by this time, layoffs are imminent. The WIOA specifically states, though, that business assistance outreach efforts must be made prior to the issuing of a WARN notice to try and prevent layoffs if possible. By using the D&B Financial Stress Score, and focusing on companies with a “level 4” score, for example, WDBs can identify those companies which are just starting to experience financial difficulties, but for whom WARN notices may not be issued for another 6 months to a year.
Absent using D&B's Financial Stress Score, which is done by most WDBs, a typical WDB either guesses which companies are in poor financial shape, or tries to canvas all local businesses via email, standard mail or door-knocking campaigns to determine same. Given the lack of good business lists or email contacts, door-knocking is often the default option.                Recording the Outreach Process: Given that funding targeted for layoff aversion is tied directly to the recorded tabulation of outreach efforts, in a document known as a “122 report”, WDB personnel spend a good deal of time documenting their efforts. Some of the required pieces of information include: identifying the NAICs code of a company, indicating whether the company is within a priority sector, street address, size of company, as well as notes about the actual outreach. Unfortunately, the WDB staff spends a good deal of time researching the company descriptive information to the detriment of time that could be better spent by doing the actual outreach.        Assisting workers displaced by companies in poor financial shape to find employment in similar companies throughout the region: If a company does, unfortunately, engage in layoffs, a goal of the legislation is to assist those workers in finding comparable jobs in regional companies. Though some extremely good web-based job search engines exist, it is not straightforward to engage in job searches using these interfaces in order to find local companies similar to the one from which the workers are being laid-off.        
WDB personnel engage a variety of existing software and databases in trying to achieve the above tasks. Each is stand-alone and requires a substantial investment in time for staff to input data in one, output data to another, and supplement output data with various other data sources, research, etc. These existing components come in a few categories including business databases, data visualization software, and customer relations management (CRM) software.
Business Databases: A few public databases provide data about employers. With regards to public data sources, the Employment Development Department (EDD) Labor Market Information Division (LMID) collects data about businesses that run payroll. One obvious limitation of this source of data is that it is restricted to just those businesses running payroll. As such, small companies will not be recorded in the data. In addition, privacy restrictions require that the data only be provided in an aggregated manner and, furthermore, that only companies with 20 or more employees be included in these aggregated counts.
Given these limitations on public databases, proprietary databases become a viable alternative. These are available in two categories: company databases used for marketing purposes and those used for business credit purposes. In the former category, InfoUSA is a good example, and in the latter category, Dun & Bradstreet, Equifax and Experian are good examples. With regard to the needs of layoff aversion, the credit-based databases provide the best resource, given that they feature information related to a company's financial health and stability. In particular, the Dun & Bradstreet database, with its Financial Stress Score, is a valuable resource. While these proprietary databases provide a wealth of information about the employers in a region, extracting data as a spreadsheet or in a record-by-record format sans tools for visual analysis can, unfortunately, severely limit their usefulness to WDB personnel, who have limited time, and often, limited technical training.
Data Visualization Software: Some very good data visualization software packages and tools are available which can make large employer data sets easier to understand by transforming them into charts, graphs and maps. These include stand-alone, do-it-yourself products, such as Tableau and ESRI, or websites featuring labor market data already packaged in data visualization, such as the subscription-based EMSI and the publicly available EDD LMID.
In the former category, given the lack of technical expertise in WDB staffs, a substantial amount of investment would be required to set up the software system. Once set up, such system will likely be similar to the tools already available in the latter category. The limitation of these latter category tools is that due to their use of public data sources (from the EDD LMID), the data must be provided in an aggregated format. Both tools do additionally provide access to disaggregated proprietary data, including that from both InfoUSA and Equifax, but given that these lists are retrieved from data sources distinct from that used for the aggregate data, there is a cognitive disconnect in understanding the relationship among the statistics and the raw data lists.
Furthermore, though the aggregated data may be portrayed spatially on a thematic map, the business data are provided in a list format, making it hard to visually correlate the two. Additionally, no filter tools are provided to determine those companies which may be having financial difficulties. If a WDB wanted to run that query, it would need to purchase yet another database, D&B, in order to access the Financial Stress Score field. Finally, none of these visual analytics tools features any type of integrated outreach tools which would facilitate easy access to email contacts and enable the tracking of group comments across companies in priority sectors in need of business assistance. Rather, if a WDB wants to track outreach from within the group, the agency would either need to invest in CRM software or, as occurs most frequently, staff would simply maintain disparate spreadsheets of business lists, inviting both confusion and mistakes.
Customer Relations Management: If a WDB has invested in a CRM software system, such as salesforce.com or sugarCRM, the information in the tool is cognitively disconnected from the visual analytics tools. Simply put, it is difficult to visualize which businesses belong to which sectors, which sectors are priority sectors and to understand why. Though these tools are excellent for recording conversations and tracking a sales pipeline, they fall short of tracking outreach for the sake of business assistance as it relates to layoff aversion. Unfortunately, accidentally expending effort on a company which is not in a priority sector will not “count” as it relates to funding, which is tied to specific measures outlined in the WIOA. The lack of clear, visual cognitive connections between business database, visual analytics, and CRM/outreach tools may therefore not only be costly in staff time, but it may also cost the WDB in future funding.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method for providing enhanced web-based mapping services and functions for supporting a new layoff aversion process. Specifically, a need exists for such services and functions which (1) quickly determine the “priority sectors” within a region, (2) find the employers within these sectors exhibiting financial stress, (3) provide CRM tools for outreaching to these employers and documenting the effort, and (4) assist displaced workers in finding employment in similar companies within the region. Moreover, a need exists for such services and functions implemented as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) system.